I never did finish this book. Although I enjoyed the description of Early 20th century Rural Kentucky Life, I just found it a little too depressing to go on.
Helpful Score: 2
What other novel about quintuplets born to a radically changed woman in the year 1900 would satisfy you so much? This author is terrific in her character descriptions, a sort of "country singer of the page," as one reviewer put it. An engaging story, a good read.
...Cristie is a salt-of-the-Earth woman who gives birth to quintuplets. She and her family are well-intentioned, but ill-equipped to handle the needs of five babies. This story held my attention with its backwoods language and superstitions about women and babies.
I didn't finish this book. When it was good, it was very good, but geez it just took so darn long to get where it was going, even if it was only around the corner, that I just lost patience with it. Others may truly love it.
Set in the apocalyptic atmosphere of 1900 - a time when many Americans were looking for signs foretelling the end of the world - Feather Crowns is the story of a young woman who unintentionally creates a national sensation. A firm wife living near the small town of Hopewell, Kentucky, Christianna Wheeler gives birth to the first recorded set of quintuplets in North America. Christie is suddenly thrown into a swirling storm of public attention. Thousands of strangers descend on her home, all wanting to see and touch the "miracle babies." One visitor crawls right in through the window! The fate of the babies and the bizarre events that follow their births propel Christie and her husband far from home, on a journey that exposes them to the turbulent pageant of life at the beginning of the modern era. Richly detailed and poignant, Feather Crowns focuses on one woman but opens out ultimately into the chronicle of a time and a people. Written in Bobbie Ann Mason's taut yet lyrical prose, the novel ranges from a peaceful farming community to a fire-and-brimstone revival camp, from seamy traveling shows to the hushed precincts of the nation's capital. Moving through the center of it all is Christie, a charming, headstrong, loving woman who struggles heroically to come to terms with the extraordinary events of her long life. Feather Crowns is an American parable of profound resonance. Spellbindingly readable, it is a novel of classic stature destined to confirm Bobbie Ann Mason as one of America's most important writers.
